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Despite the centrality of merit principles to governance in the United States over the past century, scant empirical research examines linkages between institutions, and outcomes in the implementation of merit system protections. We argue that the fate of merit principles depends, at a minimum, on two influences that may compete with neutral competence. The first is partisan responsiveness by counterbureaucracies charged with holding agencies accountable to merit principles. The second influence is the sacrifice of merit in the interest of managerial prerogatives at the agency level. This exploratory study assesses both of these influences within the federal government. Our data consist of personal interviews, analyses of U.S. Merit System Protection Board (MSPB) processes, case loads, and decisions between fiscal years 1988 and 1997, and a brief case study of the Justice Department. We find that the MSPB is largely the neutral and competent agency that Congress intended to create when it enacted the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. Less positively, our analysis also reveals that federal agencies vary in how well their personnel actions fare with the MSPB. This finding is especially germane to reinventing-government reforms that decentralize personnel management to agencies or try line operators within agencies.
Merit principles have helped to define the character of bureaucracy in the United States for more than a century. Indeed, civil service protections of employee rights have affected American government in ways that extend far beyond the boundaries of public administration. Moreover, as current reformers offer prescriptions for reinventing public personnel systems at all levels of government to` day, a central matter of concern has become how best to protect merit principles in an era of fundamental change (Barzelay 1992; Kettl, Ingraham, Sanders, and Horner 1996; also see Condrey 1998).
Notwithstanding the importance of merit principles, scholars have practically ignored the linkages between institutions and outcomes of merit system protections. As a result, we have little understanding of how objectively and consistently merit is implemented. To be sure, scholars have described the negative impact of complex, confusing, and often contradictory merit procedures on public service recruitment, on managerial flexibility,' and on agency efficiency and effectiveness (for excellent summaries, see Rosen 1986; Wilson 1989; Ingraham and Rosenbloom 1991; Thompson 1993; Kettl, Ingraham, Sanders, and Homer 1996)....